Curious Moss and Strange Bushes. 109 



shaped, the tuft — if there is one present — is invariably to be 

 found perched on the highest part of it. I can only attribute 

 this to the peculiar habit of growth of the moss, adapting it 

 specially to this shape and this situation ; a situation to which 

 moreover it gives a decided preference, for I have not observed 

 it growing elsewhere. Sometimes on climbing a rocky mountain 

 hereabouts, one sees from afar off one of these tufts perched on 

 a commanding pinnacle at the summit ; then one thinks that 

 surely this must be a cairn erected by some desolate traveller, and 

 it is only on approaching closely that the delusion vanishes. It 

 will then, perhaps, be found that the tuft stands alone, surrounded 

 in all directions by a sloping surface of bare rock which isolates 

 it by a radius of forty yards from all other vegetation ; the little 

 tuft bearing itself up bravely as if in obstinate defiance of the 

 wind and rain, which one is at first inclined to think must have 

 swept away an old uniform mantle of vegetation from the rocky 

 surface, leaving the mossy tuft on the summit the sole survivor. 



There is another peculiar form of vegetable growth which is a 

 characteristic of the landscape in certain parts of this region, and 

 which I have not noticed to the same extent elsewhere. It is this. 

 Whenever a mass of bushes happens to be exposed to the prevail- 

 ing westerly wind, as in the case of promontories which receive 

 the unbroken blast on one of their sides, or of exposed islets in 

 mid-channel, it will be seen that the bushes not only lean away 

 permanently from the direction of the prevailing wind (as is usual 

 everywhere), but that their summits are cut off evenly to a com- 

 mon plane which slopes gently upwards, and thus presents as 

 trim an appearance as if the bushes had been carefully clipped to 

 that shape with a gardening shears. Our surveying parties have 

 sometimes been disappointed at finding that a headland, which 

 seemed from a short distance to be covered with an inviting mantle 

 of short grass, and which therefore looked a convenient place on 

 which to establish an observing station, was in reality defended by 

 a dense growth of bushes, which exhibited the phenomenon in 



